


for you, forever

by NotAllThoseWhoWander



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, So much angst, TW: Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-10
Packaged: 2017-12-07 23:24:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotAllThoseWhoWander/pseuds/NotAllThoseWhoWander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They both survive, in a way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

_Afterwards_

* * *

_  
_He wakes slowly, as from a fever. Registers shape, light, shadow, moving across a white wall. A crucifix above a washbasin: Christ with head bowed but eyes lifted.

And then he in pain, and crying out from him, shaking, his hand extended.

"Please." His voice wavers. "Please, no."

Silence, and then footsteps, and someone catches his hand; an angel clothed in white, face brown and hair falling over high shoulders. She takes his hand and whispers softly that it is alright, it's all going to be just fine. She uses the formal  _vous_. He recognizes her in a hazy way.

"No," he says, and chokes on the words. "Where is he? Where is he?"

"Hush, now,  _monsieur_." Her hand on his forehead. "Hush, now, and everything will be alright, my boy."

He tells her  _no_ but she won't listen, will only pat his head and take up an unrolled bandage from beside the bed and she moves away, footsteps light on the wooden floors, tells him to sleep, just close his eyes. And he cannot but he turns away, body raw with aching.

He looks at the crucifix. His cheeks are wet with tears.

* * *

"How is he?" 

Musichetta rolls the bandage tight. It is clean, she's glad. Too much blood in this house, the house of her parents.

"Cosette," she says. The girl looks ghostly in this wan, timid light. She hasn't slept, or hasn't slept well. "I didn't see you."

"They cry, sometimes," Cosette turns her face to the window. "When they think that we can't hear."

Musichetta folds up the end of the bandage and swallows hard. "They're alive."

Cosette looks about to agree but the corners of her mouth pull tight. "Are they?"

"They're alive," Musichetta repeats, and she puts the bandage under her arm. She inhales. Cosette looks away from the window. "And he was calling for Enjolras, again."

* * *

There is a tree outside the window. Enjolras has fixed his eyes on the uppermost branches for the past twenty-four hours. He feels that he knows every leaf, twig, twist and knot in the wood. Has he blinked? Looked away? Someone once told him that blind men love the light best. He is not blind. 

He sees.

They come and go, the girls. A dark-haired spectre brought him wine and made him drink, and looked at him. Joly ought to have done it. Next time, he thinks, he'll ask her. When she had taken the wine away she had touched his hair, gently.

He falls asleep, uneasily, and dreams dark and wild with blood, with screams and then light, fingers finding his own and breathing beside another man, the feeling of not being alone. He wakes slumped in the chair, shoulders and neck tight and the shameful surprise of tears on his cheeks.

* * *

"Where is Enjolras?"

She puts the pitcher down. Silent.

"Tell me. Tell me this, at least." His hand finds her and it shakes. "Is he alive? Is Enjolras alive?"

She nods jerkily.

He breathes again.

Stops. "How alive?"

Her face, hard. "Alive enough."

"And then others?"

"Don't. It hurts you to talk. I see it in your face."

"The others? Please."

"Yes."

"Alive?"

She swallows. "Rest."

"All of them? Joly? Combeferre? Courfeyrac? Bossuet?"

At this last name she flinches as if she's been struck, and Grantaire's chest constricts.

"No," he says.

She turns. "Yes."

"Tell me you're lying, Musichetta."

"How do you know my name?"

"Tell me you're—"

"No." Her eyes shine. She leaves him aching with confusion in the semi-darkness of early evening.

* * *

"What is your name?"

"Musichetta." She lifts the bandage, just a little. There is blood. She touches the side of his face, where the bayonet slashed. It will leave a scar, she thinks. 

His lips twist. 

"Joly's mistress."

She looks down. "They didn't think that you paid attention to such details. That you—"

"They're wrong." His throat, tight. "I knew everything."

* * *

He has to ask her. 

"Who?" He says.

Musichetta, her dark face painted by sunlight and shadow.

"I can't tell you. Don't make me tell you,  _monsieur_." 

"I have to know." He reaches for her sleeve. He feels weak. He  _is_ weak. "They are mine as much as yours."

"Bossuet."

His hands tighten on the chair's armrail, white-knuckled.

"Combeferre."

"No!" He lets out a soft cry. 

"Feuilly. Bahorel. Prouvaire, but you already knew that."

"God, oh, God," he says, and his chest is filling with horrible emptiness, with desperation that grows and pushes and he is trying to hold it back. "No, no, no."

"I'm sorry." She puts a hand on his shoulder. He is shaking, wishes that he could stop but he cannot. Without wanting to he cries, shoulders shaking. For them, and for those who are alive. 

"I'm so sorry,  _monsieur_ Enjolras." And she puts her arms around him and he puts his arms around her, and they cry together; her with sadness and he with shame.

* * *

There are many dreams, all of them dark. Grantaire dreams and wakes at odd hours, shivering beneath a thin blanket. The pale-haired girl tends to him. Her hands are gentle. She tells him of Enjolras.

"Musichetta said not to tell you, but I think I ought to. This is her parent's house."

"He is alive, then."

"Yes. He is upstairs. His room doesn't have a bed, they've all been occupied and he's not so bad."

"I want to see him."

"No. You can't. Not yet."

"Yes.  _Please_."

She sits on the edge of the bed. "I'll sing to you, instead."

* * *

"Where are the survivors?"

"I shouldn't be talking to you. You're not well. You need rest."

"I'm not a child, Musichetta." He takes her arm. "I can stand. Please."

"Stay in the chair. You're lucky I'm not forcing you into bed." Her face twists as she realizes the innuendo, accidental, and almost crying she says, "Joly is not good. That I will tell you."

"Take me to him."

"Stay here."

"What happened?"

"Bayonet. Stabbed."

"Take me—"

" _No_." She moves to the doorway. "You, who caused all of this? I do not think so,  _monsieur_."

Her words break his heart. When she is gone, her face dark with rage and regret and sorrow, he thinks  _she didn't mean it. She didn't know what she was saying_ and he cries into his hands. 

* * *

 

Outside the room that had once belonged to her brother. Light green-blue, walls painted that color.

She leans on the door. "I want to go in."

"You can't." Cosette's hands on her arm, her shoulder. "Stay away, until the doctor is finished."

"It's been an hour—two! I can't wait any longer, I have to see him, I have to see Joly."

Cosette tries to hold her back but she shoulders her way in. Stops, breathless. Joly, on the narrow bed, face gray, one arm hanging down, blood on the floor, so much blood, the doctor is there and his young assistant by the bedside.

"Miss!"

"Joly!" Throwing herself against them. "Let me see him! Let me touch him!"

"Miss—miss!"

They throw her out.

* * *

"Enjolras." He speaks in the evening. His throat hurts. "Enjolras."

There is no reponse.

* * *

_I need to see him. Him, above all others._

_  
_Enjolras rises to his feet. His heart, heavy with sadness.

* * *

"Musichetta, my darling, my darling..." Cosette distracts her with hands on her shoulders and fingers combing through her hair, speaking softly to her. "You must be strong for him, for Joly, you must."

And she holds her hands and stares, and they lean against the hallway wall, painted blue and green like the angry sea.

* * *

The doctor, coming through Musichetta's brother's bedroom door.

"Miss," he says, quietly. "I am sorry."

She collapses, the scream raw in her throat.

Cosette is there, trying to hold her as she breaks, slowly and then vicious, all at once, both of them, both of her boys gone, her only, her doctor and her unlucky lad, her jokers, her lover, her lovers, her life.

"No," she says, "no. _Monsieur_ , it isn't true."

But it is, Musichetta. It is.

* * *

He goes to the doorway. 

He hears the scream.

His world stops, and then lurches. He steadies himself. Breathing does not come so easily, does it, Enjolras?

He passes his hand over his eyes and he is shaking but he walks, alone through an unfamiliar house. He knows, without knowing the rooms, the halls, the doors.

He knows without knowing.

* * *

A shadow falls in the doorway.

"R."

He looks up.

His world: falling apart now, coming together. 

He swallows. He says,

"Enjolras."

* * *

"Let me see him."

"I really don't think that it's  _best_ , Miss—"

"He was my lover." She is full of bitterness. " _Monsieur_ , he was my lover. And my lover, my love, is dead and I want to see him."

The doctor, turning away. Cosette leads them to the front of the house and Musichetta is alone. She goes in. 

The bed. Joly.

She goes to him and falls on the edge of the bed, falling over his unmoving chest, the white shirt lurid with blood. Kisses him, his forehead, her fingers stroking through his hair. She cries emptily. 

" _Mon amour_." Her throat is hot and raw. " _Mon seuelement amour_."

Her chest heaves against his. She does not want to believe this but she must, Musichetta, the striking ghost, she must believe it. They had been so happy, deliriously, and he had chased her and she'd been so hard to get, holding back and then giving in, and on this hard, narrow bed she thinks of other beds—

Her own, in the building beside the Musain, his skin against hers in the summer, both of them breathless. She'd thought that one day they would marry. That she would lie in another bed with their child held on her breast.

"Oh, Joly," she choke-sobs into his shirt. "Oh, Joly."

But there are dreams not meant to be, dreams that  _cannot_ be, and maybe this is one of them but as she holds him to her, the last time she will touch him, Musichetta's world falls apart, slowly, and the dream ends and it  _hurts_ like no other pain she's ever felt.

* * *

"Enjolras."

"It's me."

Grantaire, his heart beating high and fast in his chest. "Come here."

Enjolras comes, slowly. He walks like a man with the heaviest burden on his shoulders. The weight of the world, breaking him.

"Please," he says. "Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?" Grantaire says but he knows, and he looks away. Enjolras sits, gingerly, on the edge of the bed. His gaze is hollow.

"You're injured."

"I'm fine. Will be. It's only my ribs, some cuts. Nothing." Grantaire's fingers yearn for Enjolras's touch, if only briefly. But Enjolras runs his tongue over his lips and his eyes are shining, sudden and painfully bright with unshed tears.

"Joly is dead."

"No." Grantaire's first reponse, denial. The drunk's tactics. 

"Combeferre—"

" _God_."

"And Bossuet—" And Enjolras is crying now, really crying, forgetting everything and he falls forward to Grantaire's chest, his hands goign to Grantaire's shirtfront. "And Feuilly, and Gavroche, and Bahorel—"

And Grantaire cries, too, but how can he cry when Enjolras is here, is alive, is in his arms? And he's crying but there's a warmth blooming in his chest, but it's so bitter, and he puts his head on Enjolras's shoulder and whispers meaningless quiet things in his ear.

_It's alright._

_It's alright._

_They're with God, Enjolras._

_It's alright._

_I'm here._

* * *

And he is.

* * *

There is a funeral. 

Grantaire has recovered enough to walk. He uses a crutch. So does Marius, whose grandfather came to collect him but brought him back for the memorial. He stands beside Cosette.

Musichetta would have leaned against Joly, or Bossuet, or both, but now has no one. She stands apart, in mourning black, her face hard and unreadable.

Grantaire finds his place between Enjolras and Marius. Enjolras does not look at the coffins. He turns his eyes upward, towards the sun. Grantaire is reminded, unbidden, unwanting, of the crucifix. Of broken men looking to skies, to light, to impossible salvation.

* * *

Enjolras does not let himself cry.

* * *

Afterwards, Musichetta's parent's house cool in the evening light. Quiet. Grantaire washes his hair in freezing water, likes the punishment of it. Finds Enjolras sitting on his bed. Grantaire wears his pants but no shirt. Enjolras looks at him. Extends a white hand, touches the scars across his ribs.

"Dont," Grantaire says, softly. "Please."

Enjolras drops his hands, stares at them, unblinking. His shoulders bowed. 

"It should have been me, R."

"E—"

"It should have been me."

* * *

It's time to go home.

Courfeyrac has vanished into the city. Enjolras has barely spoken to him—how are you, that's good, I owe you everything, my brother. 

This leaves him, and Marius, and Grantaire.

And Marius has someplace to live.

* * *

"I want to live with you."

"What?"

"I want to live with you." Grantaire says.

Enjolras turns away, full of shame and regret. "I am sorry," he says. "It isn't right. I have to be alone."

"Why?"

"I'm not—"

But Enjolras cannot think of a  _reason_. So he says,

"Alright."

* * *

A sun-dizzy day. The sky violently blue.

"You boys," Musichetta tells them, "have to take care of each other."

"Thank you,  _mama_ ," Grantaire jokes, without humor.

"I mean it, too. You're all that you've got left."

She looks away. When she turns back she is crying. She speaks to Enjolras.

"You were his family. And you,  _monsieur_ Grantaire. And Bossuet. With you—" she chokes on her sadness. "With you as friends, he was the luckiest man in the world." 

* * *

The street.

Enjolras walking without his crutch. Grantaire thinking about broken windows, dust, blood. Sheets on clotheslines, sunlight, paint drying on canvas. Words.

"Thank you, Enjolras. For taking me, when no one else would."

"That isn't true," Enjolras says, but he turns away and swallows. He looks back.

They face the street, Paris, the world.

"Come, Grantaire," Enjolras says, and takes up Grantaire's hand, hard. "Let's go home."

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

_And Then—_

* * *

_  
_"Need some help with those, _monsieur_?"

The boy moves with the long-legged scamper of youth, face bright with freckles. Enjolras imagines, for a moment, that this is what a very young Marius might have looked like, or Jean—

And then.

"No." He takes the bag of groceries, chest painfully tight. "Thank you."

"Sure thing,  _monsieur_." The  _gamin_ dashes away, barefoot, the heels of his ill-fitting pants dragging on the pavement. Enjolras feels sick. Sometimes, the aftermath overwhelms him. Like a wave: guilt, blood, guns that didn't fire, knives that plunged too deep. 

 _It should have been me_.

He goes home with his heart wound into knots.

* * *

The sun sets fast; autumn is coming fast. Grantaire might have shivered without his jacket, had he not been so spectacularly drunk. Tonight it's wine but yesterday it was absinthe and he never really slept it off. Hair of the dog, and all that. 

Dupont's is a narrow place, ill-lit, full of whores and unwashed men, and sailors in from the coastal towns and farmers in from the south. There is always the racket of a piano going, and probably a fiddle or pipes or a flute.

"The usual, then,  _monsieur_ Grantaire?" The barmaid slams a bottle of wine onto the counter. 

"You know me too well." He sits on a barstool and watches a prostitute grind down on a john's lap. She's young—seventeen, maybe eighteen, with raggedly-cut reddish hair, a thin face. The girl, unsurprisingly, doesn't look healthy. The john doesn't seem to mind, or even to notice: his hands are everywhere, finding her breasts, going to her hips and pulling her down against him. Eyes dark and wild, and—

"Courf!" Grantaire, up like a rocket, choking on a breath of air. The man looks up, startled. His eyes shine but it's a dangerous shine, he has the look of a man who has been made heartless. Curly hair, pale face. Yes, it's Courfeyrac. But those clothes—threadbare, and wrists thin like he hasn't been eating, like he can't afford food or maybe pisses all of his money away on wine...

"Do you know him?" The girl slides from Courfeyrac's lap, straightens her dress. Courfeyrac stands.

"I did," he says, emptily, and takes her hand. "And you're going to do what I pay you to."

" _Oui, monsieur_ ," she smirks, and grinds her hand against the front of his pants. Courfeyrac's lips part in a silent moan. He turns, not looking at Grantaire, and leads her away.

And like that they are gone.

* * *

In the hazy twilights when Grantaire is out getting drunk, and he is alone in the apartment, Enjolras finds the knife. He tries to stay away.

The blade is sharp and it stings. He keeps his sleeves down. Grantaire doesn't notice.

It's only a few times—twice, three, four quick jerks down his arms. And they fade quickly. It's not much release but it's some.

It's better than drinking.

* * *

Time to stop, almost midnight and Dupont's is too damn loud. He drags himself outside, going south on the Rue du Temple, past gloomy shuttered market-stalls and dim brothels where the business is only just getting hot. He wonders where Courfeyrac is. He doesn't really want to know.

Upstairs, turning the doorknob. The room bathed in reddish light. Enjolras shirtless, boiling water at the stove.

"It's late," he says.

"Did you worry about me?"

Enjolras opens his mouth to say  _no_ but Grantaire is already across the room, is kissing Enjolras drunk and staggering with his arms around his waist, rough, unrelenting. Enjolras steps away, his eyes wide in the dying light.

"R, no."

And Grantaire knows. And his heart breaks. And Enjolras murmurs  _you're drunk_ and eases him onto the bed and Grantaire lies there and listens to the sound of boiling water and footsteps and Enjolras's breathing, and then, later, in the blue darkness when Enjolras thinks that Grantaire is asleep, the low, mournful sound of a young man crying.

* * *

Courfeyrac comes back.

Morning, very late summer, the air warm and still. A knock at the door.

Grantaire is hanging their damp shirts out the window on a clothesline. Enjolras answers the door.

"Courfeyrac."

Grantaire turns.

 

"And Musichetta. A real pleasure." Enjolras bends to press his lips against her hand; Grantaire lifts an awkward hand, waves, confused. Her thin brown fingers are interlaced with Courf's. A full, clever mouth turned down at the corners.

"I can't stay," she says, softly. "I'm picking up a shift at Lasalle's Tavern."

"The place on the Rue du Temple. I know it." Enjolras returns. Musichetta ducks her head, turns to Courf, pulls his lips down to her own. Kisses him as if they are alone. He closes his eyes.

When she has vanished down the stairs, Courf turns to them with dark surprised defensive eyes and says,

"We help each other. I think she saved me."

"Good."

"Yes." Courf stares for a long moment. "Yes. It is."

 

And he starts coming around. Often, and with Musichetta. The bend of her lithe figure becomes familiar, like a cousin, maybe a sister. Enjolras, who has never appreciated the female form, begins to appreciate her. In her quick, clever hands there is a gentleness, what he might call a healing touch if not for the fact that she does not touch him, only Courf, and that Enjolras cannot be healed.

Courfeyrac, bless him—he is kind and gentle with Enjolras, and good, and when they sit together at the table and Grantaire works on his sketches over by the window, Enjolras swears that Courfeyrac is hiding the bitterness and the hurt so damn well, so well that even Enjolras, who considers himself the sharpest man he knows, can hardly see it.

It's there.

Always there.

A sharp twinge, like a needle in the vein, in the chest, while you're bending over to collect a fallen bottle cork. The low, heavy note of a café fiddle, and suddenly you are two miles and a thousand years away, surrounded by singing, familiar laughter.

And then sounds fade, slowly, and you reach, cling, because once they are gone a part of you is gone, too. And you are not going to get it back, are you?

No.

 

He hasn't slept a full night. A month, and then two: waking in the pine-pitch darkness of the apartment with his body trembling, bones rattling like gunfire, chest pulled up into tight convulsions. And he stifles his cries, he bites back the scream. He lies away, shaking, staring down the ceiling like a hellhound because he will not close his eyes, will not see the blood again, will not see the limp body, the ashen face, the unseeing eyes. Joly, Jehan, Combeferre. Gavroche. Feuilly.

He does not want to see them.

He does.

He hates himself.

 

Fingers light on the charcoal. Press them into the edge, just there. Yes, this line is good.

"Done." Grantaire spins the stick between his fingers. Across the room, Enjolras does not look up. "Done." Again. Louder.

Enjolras glances up, sideways.

"What?"

Bent over the table, arms folded, head hanging. Grantaire stares, their eyes meet, he sees.

He sees.

Enjolras, beaten down, beaten down, beaten. Beaten. By life, blood, paving stones under which lay the path of goodness, the path to freedom but they did not take that path, their path has led them somewhere else, to this room, in the hazy blue sunlight, and Enjolras's gaze swings away and all Grantaire can think is he looks so tired.

 

  
"R."

His name, in the darkness. 

"No!"

"What?" He sits up, tongue bitter with wine. He's fallen asleep with the bottle in his hand, almost drops it. "What is it?"

"Joly! God, no! Joly!"

The revelation hits him like a thrown punch.

"Enjolras." He stands up and stumbles to Enjolras's bed, grabs Enjolras's shoulders, tries to shake him awake. "Wake up."

"Let go!" Enjolras cries, and in the next moment is awake, eyes wild in the darkness, trembling violently. "Grantaire? R? Is that you?"

It turns something in Grantaire, to see their leader, their untouchable, incomparable leader so scared, confused, all but clinging to Grantaire's hands. 

"Yes." Grantaire eases himself down beside Enjolras, chest tight and heavy. "It's me. I'm here."

* * *

Enjolras takes great precaution to avoid Grantaire's gaze for the next week or so; the shame is consuming him alive. To have lived while his friends died hard, sudden and bloody on the pavement. To have broken in front of Grantaire, t have wept and held the other young man like he was an anchor.

So much shame.

He does not confide in Courfeyrac, although Courfeyrac confides in Enjolras.

"I slept with a lot of girls afterwards," he says. "I was drunk most nights."

"I cannot say that I did the same, Courf."

"You never did fuck anyone, did you?"

Enjolras looks away, pointedly.

"Anyways, Musichetta, she—we met, and—we had something in common, at least. Even if it was...well, we had something in common, and that's what matters."

"I'm sorry," Enjolras says. "And I'm glad that you have each other." And then, "what?" because Courf is staring at him with wide sorrowful laughing eyes.

"The Enjolras I knew would never have apologized to me."

This turns something inside Enjolras, and he stares back.

_The Enjolras that we both knew is dead._

* * *

_  
_"We need more milk." Grantaire holds up the empty bottle.

"Milk? I didn't think you wasted your time in upending bottles full of anything but wine."

Grantaire sets the bottle on their table. "What a comic you are."

"You're pretty droll yourself. Tell me, Grantaire—how many roommates do you have today? Last night I recall you addressing both myself, and the Enjolras standing several inches to my left."

"Stop." Grantaire says, suddenly.

"What?"

"Stop this. You make bad jokes and you go out with Courf, but I see it. The broken places. You're breaking, Enjolras. You're breaking, and you need  _help_."

Enjolras's breath catches. "I do  _not_ need  _help_ , Grantaire. And certainly not from  _you_." 

* * *

He watches Enjolras leaves, and something inside of him, breaks, too.

* * *

There is a tavern, and strong wine, and Courfeyrac. And Musichetta, who doesn't ask what is wrong.

"Have some more." Courf tips the bottle into Enjolras's glass. Enjolras pushes it away. 

"I'm not Grantaire, Courf."

Courfeyrac is silent for a moment, as if considering. "You have to go back to him."

"He insults me."

"How?"

Enjolras skirts around a direct answer. "He's always drunk. Coming up the stairs at unholy hours, rambling."

"We all have our ways to escape. You'd do well to remember that." Courf's voice, suddenly sharp. "His roads to salvation ends in the bottom of a bottle."

Enjolras swallows. "I don't need this."

"No," Musichetta breaks in, a glass and rag in her hand, behind the bar. "You need  _him_."

* * *

And so he goes back, cowed, at two o'clock in the morning. Stars distant, cold. Mist fraying around the edges of buildings. The night is always darkest before dawn.

Upstairs, a single light on.

"R?"

"Is that you?" Grantaire, in shirtsleeves, sitting at the table. "Are you drunk?"

"No. Not by your standards, anyways. I can still stand upright." Enjolras pulls out a chair and sits. "Grantaire, you have my most sincere apologies."

"Well, I don't want them."

Enjolras pretends not to hear. "I've treated you badly. I've joked about you, I've been coarse. I've used you."

"It isn't your fault."

"It is."

"No."

"Yes, it is."

"You're not—we all need time, Enjolras." Grantaire's fingers work across the page of his sketchbook. "Who we are  _now_ isn't..."

"I'm fine."

Grantaire looks up.

Enjolras grits out the words. "I'm  _fine_."

_Oh, how kind it is to lie._

* * *

And then there are many more nights when they both wake up sweating and shaking, terrified, clinging to the faint light filtering through the window, each so scared and thirsting for someone's arms to fall into, for an embrace, any embrace. Nights when Grantaire lies awake and hears quiet, racking sobs from the narrow bathroom, where Enjolras has gone and locked the door.

Nights when Enjolras turns the lock on the bathroom door and stands by the sink and lets himself break, hates himself, hates himself and cries for them, for everyone, until his throat is scalding and he feels hollow.

So many nights, passing like this.

Too many.

* * *

In the morning, it's easy to pretend that everything is fine.

That the night had passed quietly, uneventful. 

That the page had been smoothly erased.

* * *

"I'm going out," Grantaire says. 

"To drink."

"Maybe. It really isn't your business."

"You're right."

"If you must know, I'm going to the university. Some girls from the school of dance are modeling for figure drawing."

Enjolras looks up and nods; a careful, measured nod.

"Good weather. Don't stay inside all day."

"I won't. I'll be back soon."

Their gazes snag. For the first time in a long while, Grantaire and Enjolras see eye to eye. Together. Cosmos in each other's stares. 

"Well. See you later, Enjolras."

"Goodbye, R."

* * *

The sink.

The dirty mirror.

Alone.

He hears them. He does. Their voices, faint laughter.

_Are you angry with me? Do you hate me?_

_As much as you hate yourself?_

_Impossible._

_  
_He cannot bring himself to look at his reflection.

_I'm sorry, my friends. My brothers. I'm so sorry._

_  
_He breaks, again and again and again.

* * *

Grantaire whistles on the walk home. Strange. He hasn't taken this route in weeks.

The song high and familiar, something about love and loss.

The sun drenching the sky. No clouds.

Courfeyrac outside the building. Waving at Grantaire.

"Courf. What's wrong?"

"He was supposed to meet me at Dupont's two hours ago. I waited forty-five minutes and came here. The door is locked. I knocked but he didn't answer. I expect you've got a key?"

And Grantaire's heart leaps and drops, leaps and drops.

"Yes." Numbly.

They go up the stairs and Grantaire fumbles the key, unlocks the door with trembling hands. The apartment, quiet and still in the heat of early afternoon, bleeding into evening, slowly. Surely.

"Enjolras?" Courf calls but they know, they both know. 

Great and terrible.

The bathroom door, ajar.

Grantaire, first, and Courfeyrac behind him.

Enjolras, on the floor. Hands folded on his chest. Like a funeral. The blood like a flag around him.

"Oh,  _god_." Courf, in the doorway, breathless.

And Grantaire falls. On his knees, without air, the moan coming low and broken from his lips.

Taking Enjolras's body, trying to lift him and the blood is seeping onto his shirt, staining his own skin.

"He used this." Courf, holding up the dizzying blade. "He left a note."

* * *

_For the revolution._

* * *

_  
_He'd used a page torn from Grantaire's sketchbook.

* * *

Hands folded on his chest.

Grantaire sees him in his sleep, can't get him out of his dreams.

In sleep he shakes Enjolras, tries to hit him, shouts at him.

 _Why did you_ leave  _me, you bastard, you selfish bastard?_

 _  
_He tries to touch him but can't.

He wakes with a shouted name on his lips, with tears hot on his cheeks.

* * *

He is breaking, too.

* * *

Absinthe.

Again.

And again.

Forgetting.

Letting go.

He allows it.

Relishes it.

Revels in it.

His own revolution, his own allowance, his past.

* * *

"Take him home." Musichetta eases him into Courf's arms. "He's been here all evening, drinking. Bought absinthe from a man on the Rue Saint-Jacques. He's been talking to himself for hours—Apollo, stabbings, death. Rambling about heaven. He's better off at home, Courf."

"I'll take him." Courf says. "Come, on, R." He holds Grantaire up, the young man's wild eyes and snarling smile. "Come on, now, Enjolras wouldn't have wanted to see you like this."

Musichetta watches them leave; Grantaire mumbling again, almost incoherant.

"I'll tell 'im you said so, I'll tell him, he's there, I'll tell..."

* * *

Still breaking.

* * *

The bathroom floor, hands on the worn wood, palms pressed down hard. Trying to  _feel_ Enjolras again.

Failing.

He is numb.

* * *

And still breaking.

* * *

There's nothing left.

* * *

Freedom.

* * *

He cries.

There is shame.

He talks to himself.

"You're laughing at me now, you snarky bastard. I hear you."

There is no pain.

"Is that you?" Lifting his hand. "I feel the weight of your skin against mine. Are you taking me to salvation, now? Are you?"

No reply. He hadn't expected one.

The chains fall away.

* * *

They find him like that, on the bathroom floor.

There is very little blood; surprisingly little.

Musichetta cries into Courf's shoulder. There will not be much of a funeral. No family to come except them, and Marius, if he and Cosette can be found.

There had been another, once.

But.

* * *

The note, scrawled small and untidy on the corner of a sketchbook page. 

* * *

_You were my revolution._

* * *

_  
_The dark valley falling away, like a stage curtain. The unburdening.

The slow, september-sun, star-spangled, banner-lifting climb towards the light. 

 

 

 


End file.
